the problem with slut-bashing (+ why we are all bad girls)

1

Many moons ago, I was having a drink with a male friend in New York when I told him this idea I still like to kick around. It’s for a nonfiction book. It would be a personal investigation of the ‘golddigger’ myth: where the stereotype comes from, how it evolved, how it gets institutionalized and plays out in the culture.

My friend then introduced me to the term ‘dinner whore’.

Urbandictionary defines it thusly: “A girl who is exclusively after a free meal or an expensive gift. She actively seeks out dates with well-off men who will wine and dine her at upscale restaurants. She is usually physically attractive enough to make the man fall for her feminine wiles. She will rarely have sex with these men, until they spend a certain number of dollars on her. Nobody knows exactly what that number is, so the man keeps spending and spending, while the dinner whore keeps living it up.”

Let me get this straight. A man, who might or might not be exclusively after sex, takes an attractive woman to dinner hoping but not knowing if he’ll get to have sex with her, which might or might not actually happen.

I think we used to call that a date.

(Although if she invited him, she should probably pick up the check.)

2

I myself have never known a woman to say, “Gosh, I’d like to eat at Spago tonight. Time to put on those five-inch glitter platforms and cruise Rodeo Drive.”

If a man can say, “It was just a one night stand,”

it seems a woman can say, “It was only penne a la vodka and a nice chardonnay. It didn’t mean anything.”

Note that a dinner whore is called a whore because she doesn’t sleep with the man immediately (or at all). She has the audacity to think that she is not required to exchange her body for food, even if Thomas Keller serves it up personally; she considers the pleasure of her company, the value of her time and attention, to be reward enough.

How uppity.

But it shows how the word ‘whore’ gets used to diminish a woman when she doesn’t go along according to plan. Or when she has her own plan.

And if she speaks out against the plan, who knows what hell might break loose. Some well-known personality might call her a slut and order her to make sex tapes and upload them to the Internet for public viewing.

Not like that happens or anything.

3

I understand that men get frustrated when they feel judged solely on the basis of wealth and status, or lack thereof; I understand that women get frustrated when they feel overlooked for some sweet busty soul who considers anything predating MTV to be of the prehistoric era. My point is not that one gender is morally superior to the other.

I believe that men and women are equally capable of love, greatness, and compassion, and the world works best when we can bring that out in each other.

But the double standard sucks. It implies that one gender has worth, and the other does not. Men can exploit women, and discard them, and that’s acceptable (especially if there’s a prenup) and even expected.

It’s acceptable because we still believe, even if we’re not fully aware that we believe it, that women are out to exploit men, to lure them over to the dark side with their “feminine wiles” so they can drain them of life energy/material wealth.

And then go shopping.

The only safe woman is a naïve and sexually inexperienced woman, a pure woman, a virgin. As Jessica Valenti points out in her excellent book THE PURITY MYTH, a woman’s moral character isn’t judged by what she does, but what she doesn’t do (have sex).

In short, a woman’s worth is located between her legs.

This is a brand of misogyny embedded in our cultural DNA, tracing all the way back to an origin story about a girl and a boy and a rosy red apple.

Stories shape the soul of a culture. They transmit the values and beliefs of a culture. As Michael Margolis put it: if you want to change a culture, change the stories.

But that story isn’t changing anytime soon.

When you call a woman a slut, it’s not because you necessarily believe that she’s slept her way through the entire NBA. You do it because there’s nothing more base than female sexuality. You want to cut her down to size, to put her in her place, for whatever transgression she’s committed that took her outside the box of ‘proper’ feminine behavior and made her such a pain in the ass.

The worst thing you can call someone in this culture, man or woman, is a cunt. Call someone a ‘dick’, and you’re implying that he’s an idiot; call him a cunt, and you’re implying that he’s trash, he’s contaminated, she’s vile. Throw her away.

As women, we understand this all the way down through our bones.

It’s not that we’re being oversensitive. It’s not that we care overmuch what other people think. It’s the visceral meaning the word carries, how it attacks and degrades the very essence of who we are, and where it locates us in the culture.

If we let it.

4

And we let it.

We use the word against each other.

We do it in a kind of self-defense: by calling you a slut, I am implying that I myself am not. We do it out of jealousy, competitiveness and scorn. We do it to exclude: we define ourselves as insiders by declaring others as outsiders. Letty Cottin Pogrebin refers to slut-shaming as “the survival tactic of a second-class human being. Lacking confidence, bereft of self-esteem, we play the only game in town that seems to offer a payoff.”

is a sad attempt to wield power by those who feel they don’t have any. Women and girls lash out at other women and girls when they recognize that no matter how hard they work, and no matter what sacrifices they make, they will always have more to prove than men and boys do.”

And because they generally haven’t been exposed to feminism, Leora adds, it doesn’t occur to them to turn against anything except each other.

Women seem to have fallen prey to something I call the crabs-in-the-pot syndrome. When you cook crabs, you don’t have to place the lid on the boiling pot because the crabs keep one another from getting out. As one crab gets near the top and attempts to climb over the edge, another crab will naturally put it down in its own attempt to escape. As a result, all the crabs go to their collective doom.

This is the problem whenever a woman defends herself by saying I am not a slut.

By declaring that you are not a slut, you are saying that some women are sluts; you are drawing a line between yourself and them. Except it’s a line that can’t exist, because all it does is reinforce the stereotype that you’re trying to deny. As soon as you buy into a reality that brands any woman a ‘slut’, you buy into a belief system that attacks femalehood itself. This includes you. You sacrifice someone else in your effort to escape the boiling water, but you can’t get out of the pot.

Says Chu:

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There are countless examples through history of women who have risen to the top because they’ve helped other women excel.

We can transcend. We can act like the pot doesn’t exist. We can refuse to use the word against another woman, or to acknowledge the word if and when it’s applied to us. We don’t need to explain or defend; we know that as soon as we do — as soon as we buy into that particular framework of beliefs – we end up perpetuating the slut game, and we lose.

Better to create – to force into being – a new reality, one in which we are all sluts and whores and dinner whores —

WOW Justine, this is sooooo true!!!!
A few years back, at the gym I was training, what you have described in this post happened….

You see, I am one of those really friendly people, so, whenever I would pass by someone, both men and women, I would say hello with a BIG smile and sometimes even strike up a conversation. Well, the men labeled this to mean “I wanted them”, that I was “easy”, however, if on the other hand, on the days where I had my iPod on, I would pass one of them (men) without saying hello, I was a “snob”.

Word of this got out, one of my friend’s brother told her about it…

Here is where it got interesting..a few of us ladies got together, we struck up a conversation with a group of men (training together), well, let’s just say we redefined the word “easy”. We admitted to being “easy” based on the definition; someone who loves meeting people.

I agree, we shouldn’t defend the fact that we are not a “slut”. Embrace it by giving it a new definition..It Works!!!

Love this post! And wow. “Dinner whore” is new to me, but fascinating. I just started online-dating, and my friends and I joke that we’re open to finding someone, but if we don’t at least it’ll give us things to do on Friday nights and a free dinner or drink. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if I did scroll profiles looking for men of means in hopes they asked me out because I know it’ll be a particularly nice dinner? There’s still nothing wrong with that. :headdesk:

The crab-in-the-pot idea is spot-on. How do we counter this? How do we reach other women in a way they can see this? It’s so hard when people are so indoctrinated, so unwilling or unable to even see the problem.

This is such an incredibly depressing subject. I don’t know why the culture is necessarily defined by the behavior of the worst people in it. I know that most dinner dates are not sex-for-food negotiations, but if you want to completely avoid that kind of dynamic, just pay for your own dinner. Not all pre-nups are tools to exploit women, and “divorce” and “discard” are not synonyms — although it they are, there are an awful lot of men out there who have been discarded by their wives. And I’m not sure who the “crabs in the pot” analogy is more insulting to — the women who behave like crabs or the women who think of their situation as being analogous to crabs being boiled alive. Lots and lots and lots of men and women say no to all of this — this way of behaving, this way of talking, this way of thinking. Justine, I think your perspective about this is warped by where you live and the circles you run in — Kelsey Grammer said in the NYT not long ago that in Hollywood, the cutest girl gets the guy with the most money. That’s a world in which each sex exploits the other. That’s just not how most people live. And to the young women hoping that men of means on internet dating sites will ask them out, I say: save your money, pick up the phone, ask HIM out, buy him his dinner, and invite him to bed if you want to. Being on the other side of that kind of a transaction will make each side more tolerant of the other’s predicament.

For Christ’s sake, Bob. I’m actually not that literal-minded or trapped in the past, even if I do mine it for material (because writers do that). I love how, when someone disagrees with me, it’s their kneejerk reaction to accuse my reality of not being in touch with reality. I never said the genders are constantly exploiting each other (and that is certainly not my reality, and I actually don’t live in Hollywood, and the man I am involved with isn’t Kelsey Grammar). I can’t believe an intelligent man like you left a comment like that. Talk about depressing. (I’m guessing you’re an engineer, or have I said this before? You’ve got that mentality.)

The point isn’t about being treated like a ‘dinner whore’ — not exactly a pressing concern of mine — the point, Bob, is that such a ridiculous fucking phrase even exists in the first place. And since language reflects our values and shapes the way we think and perceive — yes, I take stuff like that seriously.

Also, it’s interesting that your comment seems to assume that I’m writing from my misguided experience alone, even though I make it a habit to pull in other voices and cite other more authoritative sources. Leora Tanenbaum (whom I quote) wrote a great book called SLUT: Growing up female with a bad reputation that investigates these issues…you should check it out, and then write her a letter detailing how depressing and pointless the whole exercise was. :)

“Note that a dinner whore is called a whore because she doesn’t sleep with the man immediately (or at all). She has the audacity to think that she is not required to exchange her body for food, even if Thomas Keller serves it up personally; she considers the pleasure of her company, the value of her time and attention, to be reward enough.

You can’t write a piece about how society does this and then say, “but I don’t mean it LITERALLY.” I know, and you know, lots of women who have never paid for a drink in a bar in their lives: it’s natural for some men and women to resent that. The problem with “dinner whore” isn’t that it’s inaccurate, it’s that it’s unfair — it’s not fair for society as a whole (and I mean this literally) to define polite, gentlemanly behavior as paying for your date’s dinner and then call women who go along with it “whores.” That’s just a bait and switch. Lots of people are going to to do it anyway, but that’s not society’s problem. You say to men and women: “stop calling women that name.” I say to women: “buy your own dinner.” I like my solution better because it involves people making their own power instead of asking someone else to hand it to them. But the fact remains that this isn’t an issue for most people — most men and most women haven’t called a woman a “slut” in their entire lives, and Leora Tanenbaum doesn’t say they have. Limbaugh didn’t look evil, he just looked like a stupid old deaf man — women who use birth control are sluts? It wasn’t just pre-MTV, it seemed pre-George-Washington. He was laughed at, not yelled at. And, yes, I do think your perspective has been shaped very much by your personal experience and the world you’ve lived in your entire adult life, ENTIRELY APART from Leora Tanenbaum’s opinion about any of this. The world of entrepreneurs and the world of movie actors can both be described perfectly by the image of crabs being boiled alive. It’s just not the world most people live in and not an explanation for how most people behave, even when they behave badly.

Bob, I know you seem to believe that you have a lock on what everybody’s real experience actually is, but I meant ‘literal’ in that you were interpreting each statement as if I was referring directly to my own life (men discarding women for younger women, etc. — you’re right, that hardly ever happens anywhere other than Hollywood! — fwiw, the demise of my own marriage was more complicated than that). “Dinner whore” does not apply to every dinner date out there, read my piece more carefully, and Leora’s book can hardly be reduced to an ‘opinion piece’. And no, I’m not advising anyone to wait around for anyone to hand them power (doesn’t exactly fit with the whole ‘badass’ thing). You and I both know that’s not how power works. Glad to know the whole Republican ‘war on women’ thing is something the whole country is just laughing at, I guess that means I can breathe easy now. One thing we do seem to agree on — women should have financial power of their own (I pick up the check often, and I like it). When women are the financial equals of men, when female labor (including the work of motherhood) is given the recognition it deserves (other than bullshit praise and lip service), that’s when things will change…The “crab in the pots” analogy, by the way, was in the original book I took it from referring to women in the corporate world — the regular work world, not the Silicon Valley or Los Angeles world, where it’s truth on steroids — I used it for slightly different purposes here, but the gist is the same.

Also, one thing I’ve noticed about money: it immediately solves money problems. Which means those problems turn out to be pretty superficial in the end (despite the misery and stress they cause) and once they’re taken care of you get to see what the *real* problems are, and the choices people make when they suddenly have lots of options. In other words, it doesn’t cloak or hide or remove you from “reality” (which we all create on an individual level anyway, through what we believe and how we then perceive and interpret the world to support those beliefs) — it just reveals different aspects of it.

If you’re an engineer, or something related, I don’t imagine you spend a lot of time around women, really talking with them or being friends with them or exploring their perspective or even taking a genuine interest in it. You should. You would learn something.

The golddigger meme really annoys me too. I think having money is part of someone’s personality, like being funny. It means they have certain values: they value money. They want to spend their time working for it. So it makes sense that he should be with a woman that values the same.

Making money requires certain sacrifices: it means that he will be gone a lot, busy, distracted, and the woman will have to be strong enough to do most of the child-rearing solo. And so on and so on.

But I also think pre-nup agreements should be illegal — they are just a way to devalue woman’s work, as you say. Women that do the work of child-raising and household-running, often giving up careers, deserve to be compensated fairly for it even if their husband decides he’d rather be with someone else. Actually the laws surrounding community property in California are quite fair — a woman is only entitled to half the income made while they were married. I see no reason for a pre-nup at all. Any money made before the marriage is protected already. They are just about men asserting control over the relationship by controlling all the money , which is just wrong. No woman should ever sign one, or be forced to sign one.

Justine, I haven’t assumed, let alone said, that ANY of what you wrote in your piece applies to you. My problem with what you wrote is that you’re generalizing about the culture in ways that aren’t accurate, and attributing behavior and attitudes to men and women that doesn’t describe how most men and women act or believe. I don’t havea a “lock” on this, I just have my experience and, like you, stuff I read. Quoting Leora Tanenbaum doesn’t make what you wrote more true, and neither does insulting me. It’s a difference of opinion: you’ve shared yours, I’m sharing mine here in the convenient comment box. Write whatever you want, but if you only want to hear back if people agree with you, at least say so.

You and I agree about one other thing, though: that trading on hotness is a bad strategy for girls and women. Women calling women “sluts” is the other side of the coin of women lining up to run against each other in the hotness race.

And another thing: it’s actually the case that “divorce” doesn’t equal “discard” even if if feels that way to men and women who are on the receiving end. No-fault divorce and the 50-50 split of marital assets are legal tools that feminists fought for to enable women to end unhappy marriages. Yes, double standards suck, but a husband ending his marriage isn’t the same as him acting on the double standard. You can’t have it both ways — you can’t say that the idea of a female golddigger is invalid but demand that divorce be equated with “discarding” the wife. Likewise, as married women increasingly start businesses that make fortunes, it won’t be possible to continue to represent the pre-nup as a tool men use to protect against golddiggers. That was the whole point of no-fault divorce law: to take any idea of people’s intentions off the table and judge failed marriages just on the basis of economic fairness. And you can do me a favor and stop guessing at my intentions, or, bizarrely, my profession. You’re wrong about both of them.

“My problem with what you wrote is that you’re generalizing about the culture in ways that aren’t accurate, and attributing behavior and attitudes to men and women that doesn’t describe how most men and women act or believe.”

How can *ANY* man deign to assume he knows what is or isn’t accurate from a woman’s perspective? I dare say Justine & I live quite different lifestyles, in vastly different areas of the US, & have completely different backgrounds… yet as women we have much the same outlook here. You’re generalizing, Robert, that the culture Justine describes isn’t accurate. I’m here to tell you, the culture she describes is spot-on. You’re generalizing, Robert, that the behaviors & attitudes Justine describes aren’t how women & men act or believe. I don’t know where you live, friend, but I’ve moved around the country throughout my life, & the people I’ve come across fit the bill exactly as described herein.

Methinks you’re the one who’s got it wrong here, Robert. I say this as a woman in the know. And for the record, my husband happens to agree, so there’s the man vote.

There are men and women who could handle the label dinner whore. There are men out there who actually love women– enjoy being around them and getting to know them because they are women. Why do we have to be the same– equal. yes, but not the same. I enjoy opening doors, smiling and saying nice things to women– not to get them in bed but because they are different.

A man who loves women would never call one a ‘dinner whore’ — or a whore, period — and where did I ever say or imply that men and women are or need to be the same? different but equal. trust me, with all the issues going on in the world i’m not going to get my knickers in a twist if someone is courteous enough to open the door for me. :)

I’ve never heard the word “dinner whore” before, but that’s probably because I don’t hang out with the people who use that kind of language. And I’d rather use a more common word — “mooch” — which fits both genders. Just like the word “hatemonger” fits both genders — Limbaugh & Ann Coulter very appropriately — without the need to use other terms like “fat”, “ugly”, “dubious sexuality”, or “drug-addicted”.

Thank you for pulling this analysis of language and gender issues and current ‘crap’ (to be eloquent) together and sharing it so succinctly. I totally agree with all you’ve said–particularly the crab pot. We are so often our own worst enemies!

I love the post. Had never heard of Th Art of War for Women, thanks for that link. And, I am glad to see some reasonable men joining in the dialogue (as opposed to preaching at you/us).

This is a great post. As part of the ‘MTV generation’ I would like to point out that while the word slut is completely overused, I think my generation is less concerned with the stigma the word carries and in some cases, I know girls who are twisting the word into a power word.

I’ve never been called that word simply because I don’t act like one. (I was hurt and bullied other ways, though.) I don’t want to be considered a bad girl and I don’t want to go on dates or be married or have sex. It sounds so awful, so sick, so perverse, so… inhuman. It seems as though people (whatever we are) have come to a point of such extremes that we’re both monkey and machine — animalistic instincts and behavior, yet automated assembly-line style and devoid of emotional attraction — and the “man” in the middle (I use the word generally meaning human being) has gotten squished out.

And no, I am not an engineer, nor do I have Assmuncher’s disease and talk all day to plastic Trekkie figures. I’m a girl of the millennial generation who sees society going downhill to an “anything goes” mentality. Since when are Madonna or Gaga anything but “sluts”? The Kardashians and Paris Hilton anything but “fame whores”? Or Fifty Shades of Grey anything but pr_n? :-\

What Rush said was totally wrong and disgusting; yet if say, Rachel Maddow called him out for something she’d get pulled off the air because she’s not only female but a lesbian. Rush’s constituents (and the GOP in general) are still VERY popular and VERY influential, sad to say. They’d probably take a cue from Chanonymous and DDoS her to death. It still is a man’s world and AFAIK it always will be. :-(

(Although I personally only pay attention to the Canadian rock band of same name whose spirit of radio was all about Free Will. ;-D)

Not to lure Robert out from his lair again, but anyone who thinks “most men and most women haven’t called a woman a ‘slut’ in their entire lives,” has no business lecturing others on the fallacy of generalization. That’s the biggest load of bullshit I’ve ever heard.

@Justine: I want to compliment you on how gracefully you handled Robert’s comments. It’s rare to see that on the internet. I wanted you to know that I noticed.

@Junie: your comment is pretty offensive. You seem to have some progressive leanings, but then you go and insult people for no reason. “Assmuncher’s disease”? Really?

As far as the article goes, I agree completely. One of the issues that interests me about this subject is how it intersects with race. There’s a movement afoot to reclaim the word ‘slut,’ (see Slutwalk). However, this effort tends to turn on the shock value of white women openly calling themselves sluts. Women of color don’t have the same luxury, given that our culture is all-too-ready to believe the worst of them. This article touches on the issue: http://www.racialicious.com/2011/05/19/slutwalk-%E2%80%93-to-march-or-not-to-march/.

Many thanks Justine for this insightful blog which has helped me to chanel my own frustrations and self-doubt in to something more positive.

I still need to work on my own resilience to the term ‘slut’; you make a powerful point that defending oneself against sluttishness only serves to attribute the term to others – and how can anyone honestly believe they have the authority to make that kind of judgement?

But beyond that little irony, as long as sex is more scarce for men and success more scarce for women, there always will be female dinner whores and male success ‘sluts’.
The trick for men like your former husband is to slow down and go after his female side directly rather than ‘buying’ new women. The trick for women like you is to go after your male side directly too rather than ‘selling’ sex or ‘love’ for male power. However, since men and women are always going to be unequal don’t ever plan on being as big as your former husband in masculine terms or he you in feminine terms.

And one thing for sure, all women who aspire to genuine power had better toss aside bigoted feminist nonsense as a precondition for that power. There is nothing that disempowers a woman faster for me than to call herself feminist because I know how stupid, how hateful, and how false that female-supremacist superstition is. Slutty, over-‘used’ whores will always be stigmatized/command less of premium in the sexual market because that’s simply biology (see Steve Moxon’s The Woman Racket for more on this) and no amount of absurd SlutWalking by proud gender bigots is going to change that reality.

If my — five — sons’ last name remains Musk, then so will mine. The last thing I’m ever going to do is send them any kind of signal that they belong more to their father than to me.

And the fact that you chose to post anonymously indicates to me that you know how absurd and ugly your views are, and how utterly clueless your sense of “feminism”. If you lack the balls to truly own your convictions, then I can’t be bothered to respond to them (other than this note here). Luck to you. I can’t imagine you’re particularly successful in relationships — which is a shame, since money’s nice but love is nicer. To paraphrase the immortal words of Lenny Kravitz: “Love rules.” Some of us just learn this harder than others.

Gotta give you some credit…you didn’t censor me….something that your gender-bigot Sisters do as a matter of course.

So it’s about your sons is it? How, pray tell, does using their father’s name prove to them that you own them as much as he does. Very confusing for your sons, very ironic for you…and is that the kind of female power we are supposed to worship?

And please don’t indulge in twisted feminist shaming tactics with respect to posting anonymously. I could care less whether you believe I have balls or not because I’m not personally interested in you sexually. The reason I chose to post anonymously is because your Twisted Sisters are infamous for trashing ‘problematic’ people. http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm

Also dear girl, I know precisely how valid my views about feminism are because I’ve done my homework. To call those views absurd or ugly before you know what you are talking about is also likely to lose you respect in the reason-able male world…but probably gain you respect in the slanderous female world. Did it ever occur to you that there might be some fire behind all the smoke about the ‘F’ word?

And I could use a little less imagination and a little more W-O-R-K from you. You seem to the poster child for how to learn ‘love’ the hard way. Maybe you simply can’t handle the heat.

You know I read somewhere that society targets women who don’t fit into the box as being inadquate. Women who don’t just shut the fuck up and let somebody walk all over them….

society has a way of ripping a woman down and making her a sacrifice due to the book of revelation… the entire bible.

And I believe that yes, all animals have a stronger species, but a woman is the more loving of the two.

And it doesn’t mean while a girl didn’t know her worth at one point or another,

that she doesn’t know what her worth is now.

Women have to be the strongest in the bible, in order to take the blame and lashings for society… but now that we are coming to an evolutionary period in our world… the great time of spiritual enlightenment,

we realize we cannot stay mad, and we cannot continue to put women in these boxes. We cannot continue to make them the scapge goats.

We need to come together and speak, and stick up for one another, and love one another,

not rip each other to pieces any chance we get because this girl is ‘different,’

we do not understand that sometimes, people just want to be heard.

And it sure doesn’t mean that there is any happily ever after with any single one person, as we are all on a different path, and only God puts two people together… and yes, we are sinners,

we are married, and separated, and lesbians, and all of the fucking above…

but we DO have a voice,

and we DESERVE the truth,

but we do not deserve to be triggered by any vile and disgusting pictures,

we get tired of seeing PHOTOSHOPPED junk vs. natural beauty.

So I don’t cover my face with a ton of paint. Awesome.
So I was the girl who played forward… so much taller… no problem getting that ball any single time… that joker was in my court, or I was out playin’ in a fort somewhere lol. I hated you girls. You made my life hell. Why.. because I wasn’t white? And didn’t fit into your stupid little white girl body image?

I now see how much bullshit degrading women really is. And how I just went along with it for so many years… how I still go through it, and become passive…

I was going to post this to FB, but think this may be more appropriate.

I am so tired of gang bangers running around with guns, taking shit that doesn’t belong to them.

You, my friend, just happened to mess with the lady who is still married to the craziest white man the south side of Atlanta has seen in probably 10 years.

And so now, I want to move, yet again, or do I take a stance and stop running?

Do I take a stance and say yea punk, come out in the middle of the day and try that crap.
If I want to walk at night, I’ll walk at night. And If I walk at night, I’m still walking with the light.
So don’t go gun bashing head smashing folks,
learn to fight.
This ain’t just some white girl waiting to take a bite of some bait,
that starts hate
strikes fear
in the midst of the night, you’re wrong,

God’s right, satan’s grasp is no joke, make your croak, make you choke, slip slap wang willy bam bat, this bitch ain’t broke, I’m back, I hope that
you can begin to understand, this anger I have, it’s not towards the man,
it’s towards the flesh, who make me wanna throw up in the toilet,
toil boil blood boiling broil make you wanna rage
throw some glass, get out the cage,

when you don’t understand, and you wanna keep hurtin,
as a woman of value, a woman of faith,
I cannot sit back and let the sun shine all day without something to say to those groovy cats and dolls, big balls don’t make you a good dog,

I am tired of keeping my mouth shut about the violence I’ve experienced in my life. Of the hatred that flows just as naturally as the love that flows between people.

For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction.

Sometimes, those can be good, they can be bad. They can be forgiven, or they can be revenged. It is all at how you look at it.

And yes, forgiven is one thing. But I am tired of standing back and not saying anything about the violence that runs wild… and trust me when I say I see it every day, as I now live about 5 miles away from the i75 in Atlanta. It’s everywhere. But griffin didn’t have a lot of Gang bangers like Jonesboro does.

This is absurd. Why are people doing this? Why are people robbing people, left and right, taking what doesn’t belong to them, and if you’re hungry, just say you’re hungry. Don’t come after me with hatred and violence?

And at the same time, these are not necessarily attacks from Satan, as you must remember the book of Job…
as God tests us all in strange ways. And all of us are just trying to figure it out. All of us have a hard story to share. Some of our stories have more anger than others. Sometimes we do not understand the full picture, we do not understand why people are the way they are, and why they choose to live their life the way they do.

None of us have the right to judge the next, as if one is more superior than another. We all have teachers. We all have acquaintances…business partners, and confidants. We all have enemies… we all have lovers. However it is not the relationships that one has with the world, rather, it is the relationship one has with God.

And often times, most of the time, this manifests itself through others.

And I think of my own faults, to the people closest to me probably call me a hypocrite…

The violence truly has a way of ripping a woman apart psychologically… and I will not stop speaking out, as this gives me a sense of peace. To educate my brothers and sisters in Christ, to tell them that violence and demeaning behaviors towards anybody’s mother, sister, or daughter is not okay. Nor is it okay to hurt another brother or father.

1. ‘(Although if she invited him, she should probably pick up the check.)’
But convenient how that almost never happens, huh?

2. ‘Note that a dinner whore is called a whore because she doesn’t sleep with the man immediately (or at all). She has the audacity to think that she is not required to exchange her body for food’
No the “dinner whore” is so-called because she agrees to date men SHE DOESN’T EVEN LIKE solely to take advantage of a free night of booze, food and entertainment. You’re man-bashing if you think food->sex is required for most men. Nobody wants to be taken advantage of.

3. ‘But it shows how the word ‘whore’ gets used to diminish a woman when she doesn’t go along according to plan. Or when she has her own plan.’
If her plan is to knowingly manipulate a man’s emotions from the start for material gain (even if its “just” dinner and drinks)- then yes. But the vast majority of women aren’t like this and only date men they genuinely are interested in as a person.

4. ‘Men can exploit women, and discard them, and that’s acceptable (especially if there’s a prenup)’
That’s not acceptable. Nobody thinks Donald Trump and his countless wives makes him a good person. Hell people make fun of the fat old man with bad hair that has a much younger model wife. (Though he’s still admired for his illusion of success- which is different). And most prenups are either totally or partially discarded if a court rules them unfair. Happens ALL the time.

5. ‘As Jessica Valenti points out in her excellent book THE PURITY MYTH, a woman’s moral character isn’t judged by what she does, but what she doesn’t do (have sex).’
Sure- if you’re in your 50s. My generation (25 years old) expects most girls and boys to lose their virginity by their early 20s.

6. slut-bashing is terrible. But today it isn’t used because “sexual pureness” is extremely valuable (we live in america after all- not the middle east). But because WOMEN feel bad at the term. The same is true for “creep-bashing” – women who liberally throw around the word creep to any guy that shows interest in her but she doesn’t find attractive. Even though we know not all men are creeps.

If you want a blog that women AND men can respect- you need to be a lot more balanced. Men more often than not the troublemakers. But women are hardly angels.

I think, Neil, if you actually read more of my blog you would be surprised (I don’t suffer for a lack of respect, or male readers for that matter). You might want to be a little less prejudicial and kneejerk in your assumptions. Best to you.

I’d rather you discuss my points. But no, I don’t read your blog – just founded this on a google search of dinner whore. And it looks like a great blog with lots of traffic- I only meant that your audience seems to be very female-leaning. And whenever you have that- judgments get clouded with people just berating “the others”. It’s the same thing with talk inside a men’s locker room- not the most rational.

I was aware that you have no knowledge of my blog. :) Yes, my audience is female leaning, but this idea that we then cluck about how men are slimeballs (or “other”) or assume that we’re all angels, reflects or assumes a certain view of women (feminists?) in general that I don’t have a lot of patience with — and comparing my blog to “not the most rational” locker room talk is pretty damn insulting. If you knew me even a little bit, you’d actually know that I think men are great; I love to hang out with them, grab a beer with them, etc. My time is valuable, I know who my audience is and isn’t, and condescension doesn’t draw me into intellectual debate. This is probably coming off a lot sharper than I intend, by the way. No harm meant, it just is what it is. (Also, fwiw, the piece was hardly an attack on men. It was an attack on slut-bashing. Not to mention, patriarchy is not synonymous with men. Criticizing the power system of patriarchy, which a lot of women collude with and support, does not equal criticizing men, a lot of whom make great feminists whether they know they are or not.) But out of total curiosity, why were you searching for ‘dinner whore’?

I searched it because I only recently learned it and wanted to see what it’s about. Obviously you have a great blog since yours came up in the first few search pages. But the reason for my criticism is that I don’t think its a completely unfair term for some cases. And I think you’re purposely manipulating it by claiming the definition is simply any woman who refuses to sleep with a man after he pays for dinner. That’s simply not correct and despite the myth of “hook-up culture” every man knows that sex on the first date is far from guaranteed- even unlikely. The definition should be women who lead men on when they have no personal interest in them- JUST for the free dinner/entertainment. And this (I think) is rare. But it rightfully upsets most men. And its not trivial. Where I live a decent dinner date at a smart restaurant is easily $100 after wine + the time and emotional cost of being purposely led on. But instead of addressing that- you used your post to paint men as calculating miscreants who demand sex from any women they date (since they almost always still pay) or else call them ‘dinner whores’. You refuse to see the other side which is what I meant about the pitfalls of addressing an audience leaning heavily to one gender.

I totally understand that men don’t want to be used for money or material goods, just as women don’t want to be used for sex. It’s one of the many reasons why I believe that patriarchy hurts both genders. If that’s your reading of my post, I’m genuinely sorry for it. Do I think women should use men in any way whatsoever? No. Do I think they should be called sluts or whores for any reason whatsoever? No. Absolutely not. Because who ‘decides’ whether or not a woman was ‘using’ a guy or ‘leading him on’ — instead of simply giving it another chance to see if actual chemistry takes hold? See it from the woman’s perspective: she says no to the dude, she’s a snob or a bitch. She says yes to the dude if just to stay open-minded, and she’s a dinner whore. I don’t think men are calculating miscreants — not most of them, at any rate. But the *culture* still has misogynistic undertones, and slut-bashing is very much part of that, and it’s a way of defining and controlling women, of keeping them in their place. And it’s not just men (some men) by any means — a lot of *women* are very quick to call other women sluts and whores. But look, this is a blog post. It’s not going to contain all perspectives. It is from the female perspective, which in general has a history of being shouted down by the male perspective, because men are taught to be intimidating and women still allow themselves to be intimidated, to be nice girls, to be polite or whatever. The point is to open up a conversation — not to *be* the *entire* conversation. I would like nothing more for men and women to come together and share their honest experiences — including and especially the raw and painful parts — without so quickly getting heated, defensive and accusatory. But we both bring so much baggage to the table — and are so quick to misread things, to project things — that I’m not sure how we can make that possible.

Your article was very enlightening… But I must point out that there are females out there that do use sex to prey on men. The internet and social media have created a bonanza for trampy women to lure men into innocuous, indiscriminate relations… Many with hopes of driving them to a website where they can make a buck. As a married woman of 20 years, I’ve been confronted with the onslaught of sluts that are commodifying cyber connections and it saddens me beyond belief. I call them sluts not because I feel lessened by their behavior, but because of their lewd behavior. Yes, there are sluts and tramps out there because our society and culture have sanctioned it as acceptable behavior. That doesn’t lessen the woman I am… It actually empowers me even more to point out how debased they’ve made themselves. Any woman who behaves in such a manner is cursing all the positive moves made to put women on par with men. In my book, yes they are sluts and tramps and should be treated accordingly.

Call them sluts and tramps and this is what you are saying: they are ‘bad’ women because they are sexual. Period. What it seems you actually mean is that they are ‘bad’ because they are predatory and exploitative. There is a difference.

(Where is the man’s, any man’s, responsibility in this? He doesn’t have to look (for long). He can get off the Internet and spend time with his wife instead. He’s a fully functioning human being with free will.)

This is what you are saying: female sexuality in and of itself is essentially vile and evil. Including yours.